721–730 of 847 posts
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So it's a difference in degree, not kind. My point stands. I'm far more concerned about an organization that has imprisoned thousands with essentially zero consequences than one that hired some paramilitaries and got in significant legal trouble for it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
I'm seeing lots of comments about national security-style concerns, and framing this in terms of the recent India-China skirmishes. That all makes sense. Where I think a lot of folks are missing the point is that this is also a tremendous boost to local Indian entrepreneurship. One of the really clever aspects of China's Great Firewall is that it keeps out international competition, which would crush local startups.…
While I agree about symmetric response to China, here is the problem: > By banning more advanced, foreign competitors, India gives its local entrepreneurs a chance to grow hugely successful domestic apps, which can then compete internationally. If India bans international apps from competing within India, wouldn't Indian apps from these new found enterpreneurs expect the same response from other countries? There is a…
I am from India, and I don't think this would matter a lot if the company doesn't suffer from grand delusions of trying to go global etc. There are a lot of very idiosyncratic things about the culture here (just as in other countries) where it makes a lot of sense to develop India specific apps.
Also, the nature of innovation itself would change if an app is developed to cater primarily to people in India. A perfect example of this is the recently introduced UPI payments scheme, which if I understand correctly is already far ahead in terms of convenience when compared to payments services in developed countries. And I am very thankful neither Facebook nor TikTok controls it in any way, shape or form!
Otherwise, I agree with your sentiment, as it applies generally to trade policies between true allies. The only problem I have is that China is an exception when it comes to these bilateral trade policies, because they have a long history of bullying [1] smaller neighbors, and they can rarely be trusted when it comes to any kind of neighborliness. People who are pro-China should come and live a few years in these regions, and I expect they won't remain pro-China for very long.
And then throw in the rampant IP theft, and it seems to me that pro-China advocates are acting like useful idiots.
I will add a very ironic thing I read recently by one of those useful idiots, who said "Thank God this didn’t start in somewhere like India, because there’s absolutely no way that the quality of Indian governance could move to react in the way that the Chinese have done" [2]. The irony of course is that China is trying to convince the world that the virus didn't even originate in China. In other words, Mr. Jim O'Neill would likely be in Chinese prison if he had made that statement from inside of China. I bet the heavy-handedness wouldn't taste so good if you become one of the victims. Nassim Taleb would have mocked this as the statement of a guy who "has no skin in the game".
[1] https://news.usni.org/2020/01/27/panel-china-now-well-positi...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/11/thank-god-this-didnt-start-i...
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The original point was that China was seeking an asymetrical market which is unfair. I was responding to a comment that seemed to think that wasn't unfair to anyone. You seem to support the original comment in that China is indeed seeking an unfair advantage as long as it thinks it can get away with it. Not sure what you think you're rebutting. India's scam economy doesn't really have anything to do with the discussi…
I guess I don't understand your definition of the word "unfair" here. China isn't seeking an unfair advantage. They already have it. They've been allowed that advantage. I don't see how that's unfair when it's been willfully given to them with little to no pushback. We're just finally starting to see it as demonstrated here. Is it "unfair" for someone to eat the cake that you're not interested in eating? I think the…
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Jesse Ventura wasn't affiliated with either party, along with a lot of people on that list. The founding fathers were afraid of democracy itself and put in many explicit constraints on it, never mind undesired self-organization like the two parties. So it's easy to find perspectives from which the US isn't the archytype democracy. But what's the point? That it somehow a bit farther down the road to authoritarianism a…
They are state governors, but did the state have a majority that wasn't either of the two main parties? That's the point. In India, in this particular instance, majority of the population were sick of the political parties in the country, there were protests and then this person created an entire new party and this party went to get elected in the capital state. I think that's the what democracy should allow you to d…
If you mean the voters joined the new party apart from the election, by registering as a member. Then that happens in some states too. In many states voters don't even register for a party. In many others, the majority or plurality are registered as independent.
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A few high profile companies deciding to stop advertising on Facebook is not "All American companies move in lockstep". Thousands of companies still advertise on Facebook, and Facebook is still doing fine. Tell me what kind of videos you'll be banned by payments companies over, please. Because I used to run the (at the time) biggest BDSM porn company on the internet, and yes we took credit cards. There is no "North A…
> Tell me what kind of videos you'll be banned by payments companies over, please. Videos showing American war crimes, specifically the “capital murder” video on wikileaks, which caused visa, paypal and mastercard to all pull the ability to use their services to donate to wikileaks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
Doesn't look very banned to me.
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I think you forget a detail. Nation state, or any state, are sovereign. If the national community agrees on something, it's all that matter. We don't have to abide by other countries standards on everything especially if we dont like it. Im thinking as a French I had to fight a lot with free speech absolutists abroad, while at home we're quite okay with selective censorship... it sounds scary to an American sometimes…
> Im thinking as a French I had to fight a lot with free speech absolutists abroad, while at home we're quite okay with selective censorship... it sounds scary to an American sometimes, but hell we dont care :D I'm not surprised you're being downvoted as I've tried to make this point with American friends before and gotten the same reaction 10/10 times. To use a very topical example: in other jurisdictions outside of…
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I guess I don't understand your definition of the word "unfair" here. China isn't seeking an unfair advantage. They already have it. They've been allowed that advantage. I don't see how that's unfair when it's been willfully given to them with little to no pushback. We're just finally starting to see it as demonstrated here. Is it "unfair" for someone to eat the cake that you're not interested in eating? I think the…
So you do agree that they are seeking to maintain unfair trade. Cool.
And not in a "I want to dunk on you way". I just want to understand your viewpoint.
Update: It's clear you aren't actually interested in having a discussion about this. Which is sad.
It's sad that people are so taken by their China is bad mentality that they're unwilling to think about China in any other terms. I don't condone many of the actions of the PRC but they made some brilliant decisions about economic policy with a lot of forethought that is has allowed them to grow their economy at an astronomical pace.
We like to beat our chest about free-market principles in the US but it's a vague fantasy at best. Meanwhile China has done the opposite. China is communist, but uses all the best parts of free market values where they need to.
China has built their economy to allow China to grow rapidly and we have allowed them to take our industrial base away from us because of the relative cost of labor. I'd have called that an unfair deal if they hadn't planned ahead so well.
Now as we see the see-saw turn toward their end it becomes obvious. China set themselves up to succeed and we've set our selves up to fail.
But by all means, reject China wholesale because of the moral/ethical issues. It's not like we don't have our own.
To be clear, India has banned most of the apps listed for the members of their army years ago. Also, many of the apps listed have been removed from the Google Play store several times for violating Googles developer policies and user privacy. Anyone familiar with Android knows to avoid apps made by DU and CM. Another little known factoid is that the “Beauty camera” line (Mitu?) has an admistrative level person that u…
Well.. besides the blatant privacy concerns, it seems fair to ban Chinese apps since they themselves also ban foreign apps.
I strongly disagree. We should prefer to not divide the world if we can. The sentiment "If they can be bad, so can I" is not the recipe for a world I want to build. I believe the world would regress if we kept acting like that.
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Google is a public company, not that it should matter in this context.
AFAIK “public company” is a misnomer shorthand for “publicly-traded company”, it has nothing to do with "public sector" or similar concepts. Publicly-traded companies are still private corporations.